Editorial: ​Tories speak with a welcome firm voice about asking Keir Starmer to choose between Dublin and veterans

The way in which the handling of the legacy of the Troubles will be decided is approaching a critical point.​

As we report on our front page and on page 13, the government is hoping in the coming months to pass its legislation that will dictate how the past is examined.

For more than a decade, this newspaper and a small number of other voices have been warning about the things that have been happening on legacy to demonise UK security forces who prevented civil war, thus sanitising terrorists who brought this society to the brink.

It took a long time for some unionist politicians to heed these warnings, and for the last Conservative government to do so. Then when, belatedly, the Tories realised what was happening, they tried to shut legacy down, rather than to balance it.

The net result was a conditional amnesty scheme that, as Labour has pointed out, had minimal political support. But unionists then allowed their own opposition to that conditional amnesty to be bracketed by Labour alongside that of Sinn Fein and others, as if there was a common thread. Consequently, Labour got legacy back on track as an anti-UK process. The problem with the Tory approach was not so much that it tried to close down legacy (there is an argument that this is the only way forward without creating fresh division) but that it never took the political fight to either republicans, or their supporters in the Irish government. Not even when Ireland sued the UK over the amnesty plan while pursuing its own amnesty for the IRA.

This is, as we have said for years, a massive scandal. Yet still there is no proper attempt to turn the table on nationalist hypocrisy. It is very good to hear Alex Burghart, the NI Tory spokesperson, ask Keir Starmer to choose in his loyalties between his foolish legacy deal with Ireland, and the veterans who served this nation against terror.